Read the book: «Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster», page 52

Mervyn and his wife were going for two nights to the rooms at the office, in the first lull of the bridal invitations, which were infinitely more awful to Cecily than to Phœbe.  After twenty-nine years of quiet clerical life, Cecily neither understood nor liked the gaieties even of the county, had very little to say, and, unless her aunt were present, made Phœbe into a protector, and retired behind her, till Phœbe sometimes feared that Mervyn would be quite provoked, and remember his old dread lest Cecily should be too homely and bashful for her position.  Poor dear Cecily!  She was as good and kind as possible; but in the present close intercourse it sometimes would suggest to Phœbe, ‘was she quite as wise as she was good?’

And Miss Fennimore, with still clearer eyes, inwardly decided that, though religion should above all form the morals, yet the morality of common sense and judgment should be cultivated with an equal growth.

Cecily returned from London radiant with sisterly congratulation, in a flutter of delight with Mr. Randolf, and intimating a glorious project in the background, devised between herself and Mervyn, then guarding against possible disappointment by declaring it might be all her own fancy.

The meaning of these prognostics appeared the next morning.  Mervyn had been much impressed by Humfrey Randolf’s keen business-like appearance and sensible conversation, as well as by Mr. Currie’s opinion of him; and, always detesting the trouble of his own distillery, it had occurred to him that to secure an active working partner, and throw his sister’s fortune into the business, would be a most convenient, generous, and brotherly means of smoothing the course of true love; and Cecily had been so enchanted at the happiness he would thus confer, that he came to the Underwood quite elevated with his own kindness.

Phœbe heard his offer with warm thankfulness, but could not answer for Humfrey.

‘He has too much sense not to take a good offer,’ said Mervyn, ‘otherwise, it is all humbug his pretending to care for you.  As to Robert’s folly, have not I given up all that any rational being could stick at?  I tell you, it is the giving up those houses that makes me in want of capital, so you are bound to make it up to me.’

Mervyn and Phœbe wrote by the same post.  ‘I will be satisfied with whatever you decide upon as right,’ were Phœbe’s words; but she refrained from expressing any wish.  What was the use of a wise man, if he were not to be let alone to make up his mind?  She would trust to him to divine what it would be to her to be thus one with her own family, and to gain him without losing her sisters.  The balance must not be weighted by a woman’s hand, when ready enough to incline to her side; and why should she add to his pain, if he must refuse?

How ardently she wished, however, can be imagined.  She could not hide from herself pictures of herself and Humfrey, sometimes in London, sometimes at the Underwood, working with Robert, and carrying out the projects which Mervyn but half acted on, and a quarter understood.

The letter came, and the first line was decisive.  In spite of earnest wishes and great regrets, Humfrey could not reconcile the trade to his sense of right.  He knew that as Mervyn conducted it, it was as unobjectionable as was possible, and that the works were admirably regulated; but it was in going over the distillery as a curiosity he had seen enough to perceive that it was a line in which enterprise and exertion could only find scope by extending the demoralizing sale of spirits, and he trusted to Phœbe’s agreeing with him, that when he already had a profession fairly free from temptation, it was his duty not to put himself into one that might prove more full of danger to him than to one who had been always used to it.  He had not consulted Robert, feeling clear in his own mind, and thinking that he had probably rather not interfere.

Kind Humfrey!  That bit of consideration filled Phœbe’s heart with grateful relief.  It gave her spirits to be comforted by the tender and cheering words with which the edge of the disappointment was softened, and herself thanked for her abstinence from persuasion.  ‘Oh, better to wait seven years, with such a Humfrey as this in reserve, than to let him warp aside one inch of his sense of duty!  As high-minded as dear Robert, without his ruggedness and harshness,’ she thought as she read the manly, warm-hearted letter to Mervyn, which he had enclosed, and which she could not help showing to Bertha.

It was lost on Bertha.  She thought it dull and poor-spirited not to accept, and manage the distillery just as he pleased.  Any one could manage Mervyn, she said, not estimating the difference between a petted sister and a junior partner, and it was a new light to her that the trade—involving so much chemistry and mechanic ingenuity—was not good enough for anybody, unless they were peacocks too stupid to appreciate the dignity of labour!  For the first time Phœbe wished her secret known to Miss Charlecote, for the sake of her appreciation of his triumph of principle.

‘This is Robert’s doing!’ was Mervyn’s first exclamation, when Phœbe gave him the letter.  ‘If there be an intolerable plague in the world, it is the having a fanatical fellow like that in the family.  Nice requital for all I have thrown away for the sake of his maggots!  I declare I’ll resume every house I’ve let him have for his tomfooleries, and have a gin bottle blown as big as an ox as a sign for each of them.’

Phœbe had a certain lurking satisfaction in observing, when his malediction had run itself down, ‘He never consulted Robert.’

‘Don’t tell me that!  As if Robert had not run about with his mouth open, reviling his father’s trade, and pluming himself on keeping out of it.’

‘Mervyn, you know better!  Robert had said no word against you!  It is the facts that speak for themselves.’

‘The facts?  You little simpleton, do you imagine that we distil the juices of little babies?’

Phœbe laughed, and he added kindly, ‘Come, little one, I know this is no doing of yours.  You have stuck by this wicked distiller of vile liquids through thick and thin.  Don’t let the parson lead you nor Randolf by the nose; he is far too fine a fellow for that; but come up to town with me and Cecily, as soon as Lady Caroline’s bear fight is over, and make him hear reason.’

‘I should be very glad to go and see him, but I cannot persuade him.’

‘Why not?’

‘When a man has made up his mind, it would be wrong to try to over-persuade him, even if I believed that I could.’

‘You know the alternative?’

‘What?’

‘Just breaking with him a little.’

She smiled.

‘We shall see what Crabbe, and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking up with a dumpy leveller.  We shall have another row.  And you’ll be broken up again!’

That was by far the most alarming of his threats; but she did not greatly believe that he would bring it to pass, or that an engagement, however imprudent, conducted as hers had been, could be made a plea for accusing Miss Fennimore or depriving her of her sisters.  She tried to express her thankfulness for the kindness that had prompted the original proposal, and her sympathy with his natural vexation at finding that a traffic which he had really ameliorated at considerable loss of profit, was still considered objectionable; but he silenced this at once as palaver, and went off to fetch his wife to try her arguments.

This was worse than Phœbe had expected!  Cecily was too thorough a wife not to have adopted all her husband’s interests, and had totally forgotten all the objections current in her own family against the manufacture of spirits.  She knew that great opportunities of gain had been yielded up, and such improvements made as had converted the distillery into a model of its kind; she was very proud of it, wished every one to be happy, and Mervyn to be saved trouble, and thought the scruples injurious and overstrained.  Phœbe would not contest them with her.  What the daughter had learnt by degrees, might not be forced on the wife; and Phœbe would only protest against trying to shake a fixed purpose, instead of maintaining its grounds.  So Cecily continued affectionately hurt, and unnecessarily compassionate, showing that a woman can hardly marry a person of tone inferior to her own without some deterioration of judgment, beneficial and elevating as her influence may be in the main.

Poor Cecily! she did the very thing that those acquainted with the ins and outs of the family had most deprecated!  She dragged Robert into the affair, writing a letter, very pretty in wifely and sisterly goodwill, to entreat him to take Mr. Randolf in hand, and persuade him of the desirableness of the spirit manufacture in general, and that of the Fulmort house in particular.

The letter she received in return was intended to be very kind, but was severely grave, in simply observing that what he had not thought fit to do himself, he could not persuade another to do.

Those words somehow acted upon Mervyn as bitter and ungrateful irony; and working himself up by an account, in his own colouring, of Robert’s behaviour at the time of the foundation of St. Matthew’s, he went thundering off to assure Phœbe that he must take an active partner, at all events; and that if she and Robert did not look out, he should find a moneyed man who knew what he was about, would clear off Robert’s waste, and restore the place to what it had once been.

‘What is your letter, Phœbe?’ he asked, seeing an envelope in Robert’s handwriting on her table.

Phœbe coloured a little.  ‘He has not said one word to Humfrey,’ she said.

‘And what has he said to you?  The traitor, insulting me to my wife!’

Phœbe thought for one second, then resolved to take the risk of reading all aloud, considering that whatever might be the effect, it could not be worse than that of his surmises.

‘Cecily has written to me, greatly to my surprise, begging for my influence with Randolf to induce him to become partner in the house.  I understand by this that he has already refused, and that you are aware of his determination; therefore I have no scruple in writing to tell you that he is perfectly right.  It is true that the trade, as Mervyn conducts it, is free from the most flagrant evils that deterred me from taking a share in it; and I am most thankful for the changes he has made.’

‘You show it, don’t you?’ interjected Mervyn.

‘I had rather see it in his hands than those of any other person, and there is nothing blameworthy in his continuance in it.  But it is of questionable expedience, and there are still hereditary practices carried on, the harm of which he has not hitherto perceived, but which would assuredly shock a new-comer such as Randolf.  You can guess what would be the difficulty of obtaining alteration, and acquiescence would be even more fatal.  I do not tell you this as complaining of Mervyn, who has done and is doing infinite good, but to warn you against the least endeavour to influence Randolf.  Depend upon it, even the accelerating your marriage would not secure your happiness if you saw your husband and brother at continual variance in the details of the business, and opposition might at any moment lead Mervyn to undo all the good he has effected.’

‘Right enough there;’ and Mervyn, who had looked furious at several sentences, laughed at last.  ‘I must get another partner, then, who can and will manage; and when all the gin-palaces are more splendiferous than ever, what will you and the parson say?’

‘That to do a little wrong in hopes of hindering another from doing worse, never yet succeeded!’ said Phœbe, bravely.

She saw that the worst was over when he had come to that laugh, and that the danger of a quarrel between the brothers was averted.  She did not know from how much terror and self-reproach poor Cecily was suffering, nor her multitudinous resolutions against kindly interferences upon terra incognita.

That fit of wrath subsided, and Mervyn neither looked out for his moneyed partner, nor fulfilled his threat of bringing the united forces of the family displeasure upon his sister.  Still there was a cloud overshadowing the enjoyment, though not lessening the outward harmony of those early bridal days.  The long, dark drives to the county gaieties, shut up with Mervyn and Cecily, were formidable by the mere existence of a topic, never mentioned, but always secretly dwelt on.  And in spite of three letters a week, Phœbe was beginning to learn that trust does not fully make up to the heart for absence, by the distance of London to estimate that of Canada, and by the weariness of one month, the tedium of seven years!

‘Yet,’ said Bertha to Cecily, ‘Phœbe is so stupidly like herself now she is engaged, that it is no fun at all.  Nobody would guess her to be in love!  If they cared for each other one rush, would not they have floated to bliss even on streams of gin?’

Cecily would not dispute their mutual love, but she was not one of those who could fully understand the double force of that love which is second to love of principle.  Obedience, not judgment, had been her safeguard, and, like most women, she was carried along, not by the abstract idea, but by its upholder.

Intuition, rather than what had actually passed before her, showed Phœbe more than once that Cecily was sorely perplexed by the difference between the standard of Sutton and that of Beauchamp.  Strict, scrupulous, and deeply devout, the clergyman’s daughter suffered at every deviation from the practices of the parsonage, made her stand in the wrong places, and while conscientiously and painfully fretting Mervyn about petty details, would be unknowingly carried over far greater stumbling-blocks.  In her ignorance she would be distressed at habits which were comparatively innocent, and then fear to put forth her influence at the right moment.  There was hearty affection on either side, and Mervyn was exceedingly improved, but more than once Phœbe saw in poor Cecily’s harassed, puzzled, wistful face, and heard in her faltering remonstrances, what it was to have loved and married without perfect esteem and trust.

CHAPTER XXXII

 
Get thee an ape, and trudge the land
The leader of a juggling band.
 

—Scott

‘Master Howen, Master Howen, you must not go up the best stairs.’

‘But I will go up the best stairs.  I don’t like the nasty, dark, back stairs!’

‘Let me take off your boots then, sir; Mrs. Stubbs said she could not have such dirty marks—’

‘I don’t care for Mrs. Stubbs!  I won’t take my boots off!  Get off—I’ll kick you if you touch them!  I shall go where I like!  I’m a gentleman.  I shall ave hall the Olt for my very hown!’

‘Master Howen!  Oh my!’

For Flibbertigibbet’s teeth were in the crack orphan’s neck, and the foot that she had not seized kicking like a vicious colt, when a large hand seized him by the collar, and lifted him in mid-air; and the crack orphan, looking up as though the oft-invoked ‘ugly man’ of her infancy had really come to bear off naughty children, beheld for a moment, propped against the door-post, the tall figure and bearded head hitherto only seen on the sofa.

The next instant the child had been swung into the study, and the apparition, stumbling with one hand and foot to the couch, said breathlessly to the frightened girl, ‘I am sorry for my little boy’s shameful behaviour!  Leave him here.  Owen, stay.’

The child was indeed standing, as if powerless to move or even to cry, stunned by his flight in the air, and dismayed at the terrific presence in which he was for the first time left alone.  Completely roused and excited, the elder Owen sat upright, speaking not loud, but in tones forcible from vehement feeling.

‘Owen, you boast of being a gentleman!  Do you know what we are?  We are beggars!  I can neither work for myself nor for you.  We live on charity.  That girl earns her bread—we do not!  We are beggars!  Who told you otherwise?’

Instead of an answer, he only evoked a passion of frightened tears, so piteous, that he spoke more gently, and stretched out his hand; but his son shook his frock at him in terror, and retreated out of reach, backwards into a corner, replying to his calls and assurances with violent sobs, and broken entreaties to go back to ‘granma.’

At last, in despair, Owen lowered himself to the floor, and made the whole length of his person available; but the child, in the extremity of terror at the giant crawling after him, shrieked wildly and made a rush at the door, but was caught and at once drawn within the grasp of the sweeping arm.

All was still.  He was gathered up to the broad breast; the hairy cheek was gently pressed against his wet one.  It was a great powerful, encircling caress that held him.  There was a strange thrill in this contact between the father and son—a new sensation of intense loving pity in the one, a great but soothing awe in the other, as struggling and crying no more, he clung ever closer and closer, and drew the arm tighter round him.

‘My poor little fellow!’  And never had there been such sweetness in those deep full tones.

The boy responded with both arms round his neck, and face laid on his shoulder.  Poor child! it was the affection that his little heart had hungered for ever since he had left his grandmother, and which he had inspired in no one.

A few more seconds, and he was sitting on the floor, resting against his father, listening without alarm to his question—‘Now, Owen, what were you saying?’

‘I’ll never do it again, pa—never!’

‘No, never be disobedient, nor fight with girls.  But what were you saying about the Holt?’

‘I shall live here—I shall have it for my own.’

‘Who told you so?’

‘Granma.’

‘Grandmamma knows nothing about it.’

‘Shan’t I, then?’

‘Never!  Listen, Owen.  This is Miss Charlecote’s house as long as she lives—I trust till long after you are a man.  It will be Mr. Randolf’s afterwards, and neither you nor I have anything to do with it.’

The two great black eyes looked up in inquiring, disappointed intelligence.  Then he said, in a satisfied tone—

‘We ain’t beggars—we don’t carry rabbit-skins and lucifers!’

‘We do nothing so useful or profitable,’ sighed poor Owen, striving to pull himself up by the table, but desisting on finding that it was more likely to overbalance than to be a support.  ‘My poor boy, you will have to work for me!’ and he sadly stroked down the light hair.

‘Shall I?’ said the little fellow.  ‘May I have some white mice?  I’ll bring you all the halfpence, pa!’

‘Bring me a footstool, first of all.  There—at this rate I shall be able to hop about on one leg, and be a more taking spectacle,’ said Owen, as, dragging himself up by the force of hand and arm, he resettled himself on his couch, as much pleased as amazed at his first personal act of locomotion after seven months, and at the discovery of recovered strength in the sound limbs.  Although, with the reserve of convalescence, he kept his exploit secret, his spirits visibly rose; and whenever he was left alone, or only with his little boy, he repeated his experiments, launching himself from one piece of furniture to another; and in spite of the continued deadness of the left side, feeling life, vigour, and hope returning on him.

His morbid shyness of his child had given way to genuine affection, and Owen soon found that he liked to be left to the society of Flibbertigibbet, or as he called him for short, Giblets, exacting in return the title of father, instead of the terrible ‘pa.’  Little Owen thought this a preparation for the itinerant white-mouse exhibition, which he was permitted to believe was only delayed till the daily gymnastic exertions should have resulted in the use of crutches, and till he could safely pronounce the names of the future mice, Hannibal and Annabella, and other traps for aspirates!  Nay, his father was going to set up an exhibition of his own, as it appeared; for after a vast amount of meditation, he begged for pen and paper, ruler and compasses, drew, wrote, and figured, and finally took to cardboard and penknife, begging the aid of Miss Charlecote, greatly to the distress of the little boy, who had thought the whole affair private and confidential, and looked forward to a secret departure early in the morning, with crutches, mice, and model.

Miss Charlecote did her best with needle and gum, but could not understand; and between her fears of trying Owen’s patience and letting him overstrain his brain, was so much distressed that he gave it up; but it preyed on him, till one day Phœbe came in, and he could not help explaining it to her, and claiming her assistance, as he saw her ready comprehension.  For two afternoons she came and worked under him; and between card, wire, gum, and watch-spring, such a beauteous little model locomotive engine and train were produced, that Owen archly assured her that ‘she would be a fortune in herself to a rising engineer,’ and Honor was struck by the sudden crimson evoked by the compliment.

Little Owen thought their fortune made, and was rather disappointed at the delay, when his father, confirming his idea that their livelihood might depend on the model, insisted that it should be carried out in brass and wood, and caused his chair to be frequently wheeled down to the blacksmith’s and carpenter’s, whose comprehension so much more resembled their lady’s than that of Miss Fulmort, and who made such intolerable blunders, that he bestowed on them more vituperation than, in their opinion, ‘he had any call to;’ and looked in a passion of despair at the numb, nerveless fingers, once his dexterous servants.

Still his spirits were immensely improved, since resolution, hope, and independence had returned.  His mental faculties had recovered their force, and with the removal of the disease, the healthfulness and elasticity of his twenty-five years were beginning to compensate for the lost powers of his limbs.  As he accomplished more, he grew more enterprising and less disinclined to show off his recovered powers.  He first alarmed, then delighted Honor; begged for crutches, and made such good use of them, that Dr. Martin held out fair hopes of progress, though advising a course of rubbing and sea-air at Brighton.

Perhaps Honor had never been happier than during these weeks of improvement, with her boy so completely her own, and more than she had ever known him; his dejection lessening, his health returning, his playfulness brilliant, his filial fondness most engaging.  She did not know the fixed resolution that actuated him, and revived the entire man!  She did not know what was kept in reserve till confidence in his efficiency should dispose her to listen favourably.  Meantime the present was so delightful to her that she trembled and watched lest she should be relapsing into the old idolatry.  The test would be whether she would put Owen above or below a clear duty.

The audit of farm-accounts before going to Brighton was as unsatisfactory as the last.  Though not beyond her own powers of unravelling, they made it clear that Brooks was superannuated.  It was piteous to see the old man seated in the study, racking his brains to recollect the transaction with Farmer Hodnet about seed-wheat and working oxen; to explain for what the three extra labourers had been put on, and to discover his own meaning in charging twice over for the repairs of Joe Littledale’s cottage; angered and overset by his mistress’s gentle cross-examination, and enraged into absolute disrespect when that old object of dislike, Mr. Sandbrook, looked over the books, and muttered suggestions under his moustache.

‘Poor old man!’ both exclaimed, as he left the room, and Honor sighed deeply over this failure of the last of the supports left her by Humfrey.  ‘I must pension him off,’ she said.  ‘I hope it will not hurt his feelings much!’ and then she turned away to her old-fashioned bureau, and applied herself to her entries in her farming-books, while Owen sat in his chair, dreamily caressing his beard, and revolving the proposition that had long been in his mind.

At last the tall, red book was shut, the pen wiped, the bureau locked, and Honor came back to her place by the table, and resumed her needlework.  Still there was silence, till she began: ‘This settles it!  I have been thinking about it ever since you have been so much better.  Owen, what should you think of managing the property for me?’

He only answered by a quick interrogative glance.

‘You see,’ she continued, ‘by the help of Brooks, who knew his master’s ways, I have pottered on, to my own wonderment; but Brooks is past work, my downhill-time is coming, high farming has outrun us both, and I know that we are not doing as Humfrey would wish by his inheritance.  Now I believe that nothing could be of greater use to me, the people, or the place, than that you should be in charge.  We could put some deputy under your control, and contrive for your getting about the fields.  I would give you so much a year, so that your boy’s education would be your own doing, and we should be so comfortable.’

Owen leant back, much moved, smiled and said, ‘Thanks, dear Honor; you are much too good to us.’

‘Think about it, and tell me what would be right.  Brooks has £100 a year, but you will be worth much more, for you will develop all the resources, you know.’

‘Best Honor, Sweetest Honey,’ said Owen, hastily, the tears rising to his eyes, ‘I cannot bear to frustrate such kind plans, nor seem more ungrateful than I have been already.  I will not live on you for nothing longer than I can help; but indeed, this must not be.’

‘Not?’

‘No.  There are many reasons against it.  In the first place, I know nothing of farming.’

‘You would soon learn.’

‘And vex your dear old spirit with steam-ploughs and haymaking machines.’

She smiled, as if from him she could endure even steam.

‘Next, such an administration would be highly distasteful here.  My overweening airs as a boy have not been forgotten, and I have always been looked on as an interloper.  Depend on it, poor old Brooks fancies the muddle in his accounts was a suggestion of my malice!  Imagine the feelings of Hiltonbury, when I, his supplanter, begin to tighten the reins.’

‘If it be so, it can be got over,’ said Honor, a little aghast.

‘If it ought to be attempted,’ said Owen; ‘but you have not heard my personal grounds for refusing your kindness.  All your goodness and kind teaching cannot prevent the undesirableness of letting my child grow up here, in a half-and-half position, engendering domineering airs and unreasonable expectations.  You know how, in spite of your care and warnings, it worked on me, though I had more advantages than that poor little man.  Dear Honor, it is not you, but myself that I blame.  You did your utmost to disabuse me, and it is only the belief that my absurd folly is in human nature that makes me thus ungracious.’

‘But,’ said Honora, murmuring, as if in shame, ‘you know you, and therefore your child, must be my especial charge, and always stand first with me.’

‘First in your affection, dearest Honey,’ he said, fondly; ‘I trust I have been in that place these twenty years; I’ll never give that up; but if I get as well as I hope to do, I mean to be no charge on any one.’

‘You cannot return to your profession?’

‘My riding and surveying days are over, but there’s plenty of work in me still; and I see my way to a connection that will find me in enough of writing, calculating, and drawing, to keep myself and Owen, and I expect to make something of my invention too, when I am settled in London.’

‘In London?’

‘Yes; the poor old woman in Whittington-street is breaking—pining for her grandchild, I believe, and losing her lodgers, from not being able to make them comfortable; and without what she had for the child, she cannot keep an effective servant.  I think of going to help her out.’

‘That woman?’

‘Well, I do owe her a duty!  I robbed her of her own child, and it is cruel to deprive her of mine when she has had all the trouble of his babyhood.  Money would not do the thing, even if I had it.  I have brought it on myself, and it is the only atonement in my power; so I mean to occupy two or three of her rooms, work there, and let her have the satisfaction of “doing for me.”  When you are in town, I shall hop into Woolstone-lane.  You will give me holidays here, won’t you?  And whenever you want me, let me be your son?  To that you know I reserve my right,’ and he bent towards her affectionately.

‘It is very right—very noble,’ she was faltering forth.  He turned quickly, the tears, ready to fall, springing quite forth.

‘Honor! you have not been able to say that since I was a child!  Do not spoil it.  If this be right, leave it so.’

‘Only one thing, Owen, are you sufficiently considering your son’s good in taking him there, out of the way of a good education.’

‘A working education is the good one for him,’ said Owen, ‘not the being sent at the cost of others—not even covertly at yours, Sweet Honey—to an expensive school.  He is a working man’s son, and must so feel himself.  I mean to face my own penalties in him, and if I see him in a grade inferior to what was mine by birth, I shall know that though I brought it on him, it is more for his real good and happiness to be a man of the people, than a poor half-acknowledged gentleman.  So much for my Americanisms, Honor!’

‘But the dissent—the cant!’

‘Not so much cant as real piety obtrusively expressed.  Poor old thing!  I have no fear but that little Giblets will go my way! he worships me, and I shall not leave his h’s nor more important matters to her mercy.  He is nearly big enough for the day school Mr. Parsons is setting on foot.  It is a great consideration that the place is in the St. Matthew’s district!’

‘Well, Owen, I cannot but see that it may be your rightest course; I hope you may find yourself equal to it,’ said Honor, struggling with a fresh sense of desertion, though with admiration and esteem returning, such as were well worth the disappointment.